


Summertime (Living is Easy)

by Nope



Category: Smallville
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-27
Updated: 2003-04-27
Packaged: 2018-11-06 02:56:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11027154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: The mind acts. The body reacts.





	Summertime (Living is Easy)

There's a fly on the toothpaste tube.   
  
Martha looks at it. It looks at her, rubbing its front feet together like hands. She's reminded of a school play, kid in a beard so fake she can see the hooks, of a dwarf Fagin. Rubbing his hands together, just like that. Actually sees it for a moment. Fagin. The fly. Splashes her face with water run long enough to chill yet still lukewarm, turns off the tap.   
  
It's too hot. The fly buzzes disjointedly around her hand. The towels are clean but she still feels dirty. Sweat sticks the dress to her thighs. Fields shimmer beyond the open window, yellow swathes under a cloud streaked blue. She turns away. The bedroom is cooler, but only just, and dull away from the sun. There's just enough of a breeze to make the net curtains twitch forlornly. Sad fly wings. Curtain rise.  
  
_There was a play_ , she thinks. A musical. Kids on stage.  
  
It's too hot. She feels heavy, weak; her thoughts are slow murky things. Stands in the hazy window but can't feel the breeze. It's so bright beyond the shadow of the house. Sunlight breaks off silver, off skin: Lex walking across the dust towards the distant barn. She raises a hand in greeting but he doesn't look around and she's too dry to call out his name.  
  
There's a pitcher on the side table. Squeezed orange juice, pulpy and sickly sweet. Ice doesn't rattle when she lifts it. Martha puts it back down, disturbing the small pot of dried herbs. Lavender and rosemary briefly scent the air, burn away. The curtains twitch. She can hear music, a faint burr of notes; wipes her forehead against the heel of her hand, crawls onto the bed, curls up around herself.  
  
_A crib,_ she thinks, _we'll need a crib, a rocking cradle._ A sigh escapes her smile. Her eyes drift closed. The air's warm, still, envelopes her there on the bed, and if she listens she can hear the house settle around her, warping in the heat, the slow sleep shifting of some old hibernating animal. Her hands are heavy, comforting her navel, the promise of a bulge. Kicks to come.  
  
_Little baby Kent, my little girl, little boy_ and _little itty bitty one_ she thinks and laughs, a warm, husky chuckle.  
  
And there will be walls in blue or pink, and a crib of oak and rosewood and blankets of sky blue and primrose, and soft white cotton and hanging stars and moons and little knitted booties and a small cartoon lamp to hold back the night and her hands move, framing the baby-to-be, slide lower. Heat's rushing. Domesticity's a turn on. Who knew? She rolls over onto her back.  
  
Her dress is smooth, damp under her moving fingers, rides up on her thighs, cotton itch against skin. A breath of wind ripples the curtains and raises a tremble of gooseflesh on her arms. Sees the fly walking upside down on the ceiling. Fingers on her buttons. Hears a faint buzzing, doesn't open her eyes, thinks of flying, of spreading wings. Her dress falls back from her shoulders. Another breath. Ghost kisses on her skin. Moving fingers.  
  
She thinks again of the play, frowning. It seems important to remember but it's shimmering in her head. Who was Clark? Whose role was he playing? Who was Fagin?  
  
"Who's on first."  
  
That brings a smile twitching at her lips. She tries to picture Clark in a beard. But no. Some-one else. Her fingers move down, heat rises, her mind goes round in circles. Not Pete, either. Chloe?  
  
"Not Chloe."  
  
_That voice_ , she thinks, and squeezes her eyes tight, _I know that voice._  
  
"Chloe was the Artful Dodger."   
  
She does know it, opens her eyes into a blue much darker than her own, smiling down at her from under a fringe of dark blonde.  
  
"Do you remember? Little Chloe Sullivan in top hat and curls, wishing to introduce Clark to 'er h'intimate acquaintance."  
  
"What--?"  
  
"Whitney," he corrects and, smiling fondly, presses a finger to her lips, covers her hand with his own. "Hush, little baby. Don't say a word."   
  
She doesn't. Whitney hums the old lullaby, is still humming when he leans forward to replace his finger with his lips. The kiss, first kiss, is the lightest of chaste blushes, almost filial. The second is deeper and too sweet. The third holds a lightning quick flicker of tongue. His hands move hers in spirals against skin.  
  
"What about--" _Jonathan_ , she wants to say, but she can hear him banging away loudly at the tractor and singing an off-key accompaniment to the blaring radio. "What about Clark?"  
  
"Scarecrow can see for miles and right through walls," says Whitney, reasonably, and slides his fingers across her stomach. "What does it matter where he is?"  
  
Martha bites off a moan and manages "...Lex?"  
  
"And Lex only ever sees Clark," says Whitney and kisses the corner of her mouth. Says "His father in himself and Clark in everything else" and kisses her jaw, murmurs "you know that" with his lips against her throat, says, "I know that" and tugs lightly at her earlobe with his teeth, and Martha gasps against his shoulder, arches her back, and his hands slide under her and deftly unsnap her bra.  
  
"What are you--" She almost loses the thought in a brush of fingers against nipple, lunges at it before it can slip entirely. "What are we doing?"  
  
"Don't rationalise. It's just biology," says Whitney, hands moving to her hips, sliding fingers beneath cotton. "Bones and muscles, chemicals and hormones. Coach always said, the body's just a machine. It's the mind that makes things happen." His hands moved down her legs, free her of this restraint, come back to explore. "The mind acts. The body--" and he grins as she bites her lip "--reacts."  
  
_Good hands_ , she thinks, and it circles back, and she frowns and asks "Were you Fagin?"  
  
Whitney laughs, shakes his head, moves slowly down as he speaks. "He dies, you know. In the book, I mean. No ambiguous musical redemption for our Mister Dickens. No Deus ex Machina. No last minute rescue. No white knight."  
  
The shock of the kiss, the slow swipe of tongue across her navel, is almost electric. She turns her head into the pillow and though her hair sees the fly like it had a beard and thinks _Greg Arkin_ wildly, _it was Greg Arkin, Greg was Fagin_ and _Greg's dead_ and, on a rising rush of heat, _Whitney, Whitney was, was--_  
  
"Bill Sikes," says Whitney.  
  
Martha says, "You died."  
  
"In the play."  
  
"You **_died_** ," Martha insists, and Whitney laughs and his fingers make her fingers make her moan.  
  
"It's just a little death." He smiles up at her, lips wet, blonde pendulums swinging before his eyes. "A movie death. Just another trophy in my case. Once the cameras are off, I keep on rolling."  
  
"When'd your hair get so long?"  
  
A rolling shrug. "Things grow."  
  
"It looks good. Longer."  
  
"Well, then." He trails back up her body, closes lips around one nipple, fingers the other, moves on, above her, against her, sliding within her. "Longer it should be."  
  
Martha opens her mouth and he puts his tongue in it, holds her till she stills then begins to move, slow, measured strokes, in and out, casually says "The thing about Sikes" as if Whitney always discusses literature like this, hot, hard, and deep in his current student. "The thing about Bill Sikes is, he's an inherently flawed creature." Slow, almost mechanical strokes, controlled like clockwork. "He can't help acting like an animal."   
  
In. Out. In. Out. For all her urging, Whitney does not change, holds to that maddeningly, exquisitely, relentless rhythm, and she turns her head, gasping for breath, sees the curtains making wild grasping motions at the bed, the vertiginous sky roil outside the window, closes her eyes. In. Out.  
  
"He's a cog in a bigger plan and his attempt to escape the consequences of his own nature, to save himself from a pre-ordained fate, kills him anyway."  
  
She touches his face, his cheekbones, moves against him, not quite listening, trying to remember when he got naked, if he was naked all along. The air feels charged, greasy. Storm warning. She flushes hot and cold and hot again, touches Whitney everywhere she can, him cool and dry against her own burning ice. In. Out. In. Out.  
  
"And little orphan Oliver, in keeping to a refined nature undisturbed by his upbringing, returns at the last to the position his parents would have wished."  
  
Her fingers slip from his hair, curl against the back of his neck, move as he does as she does, find thin metal.  
  
"Oliver Twist. Lord of the Manor."  
  
_Not quite naked,_ she thinks and follows the chain down and opens her eyes to look. The room has gotten darker and Whitney's dog tags are swinging in sympathy to their motion, twinkling in the storm light, and it takes her a moment to focus on the engraved metal. Takes her another to recognise the strange loops and hard lines and alien curls of the symbols where his name and number should be, to make a moaning gasp unrelated to the rubbing pressure inside, to ask "Who are you?"   
  
Whitney doesn't answer and she plants a hand against his jaw and pushes until she can see his eyes, deep green eyes, blank stone gaze, repeats, almost cries, "Who are you?"  
  
He laughs softly, turns into her hand, drawls "Martha" against her palm, catches her other hand as it swings and shoves them both back to the bed, trapping her down. He's humming again, a tuneless, pulsing, vibrating note she can feel echo in the hollow of his chest, a note that somehow continues when he speaks.  
  
"Look, Martha. Can you see it?" He nudges her face with his own, turning her so she's looking out of the window. The sky's breaking overhead. Her breath catches in her throat. "Can you feel it? Growing to its eventual, inevitable conclusion?"  
  
The first drops of rain hit the window, thick and heavy, and she arches up into him, their fingers entwined so hard it hurts, and he's almost growling against her shoulder.  
  
"Can you taste it? It's the future, Martha, the tide of fate, pushing us forward, and when it breaks, it will cleanse this world."  
  
Her eyes force themselves closed, and the rain hits harder, drumming against the house, now and, muffled, she hears Jonathan curse and Whitney says "Can you feel it--" and she arches up into the explosion of his words, hears his voice, her voice, saying "Martha" or maybe it's "Mother" and her fists clench hard enough to mark and the world burns away green and dissolves behind her eyelids.  
  
Rain whispers. Soft thuds on the curtains, hard on the glass.   
  
Martha opens her eyes to the empty room.   
  
The fly is still on the ceiling.   
  
Below her, Jonathan is stomping around in the kitchen. She doesn't answer his call. Her dress is lying round her. She pulls it close, fumbling at the buttons. Can't find her breath. She wraps her arms tight across her stomach. The rain is getting in. She doesn't get up. The rain is loud. It's tapping on the porch. She closes her eyes, listening. Faint drumming on Lex's car. Fainter on the barn roof. Faintest on the doors to the storm cellar, yet still drowns the fading hum.  
  
The ship settles back to earth and silence.


End file.
